Better Than Bac-Os!

Mandoline photo from http://www.kitchenistadiaries.com

This is a mandoline. According to Wikipedia "The item being sliced is normally held in a carrier to protect the cook's fingers." Notice that Martha Stewart's example in this picture shows a delicate grip, sans "carrier", grasping the cucumber. It looks easy and Martha even provides advice on other grips to use depending upon the size and shape of the food to be sliced.

My mandoline looked like this one and had a round, toothed carrier, kind of like an upside down plastic bed of nails. You just plunge it into the carrot, potato, or cabbage and you have an instant "handle' on your food. The point of course, is to keep all digits clear of the blade. It makes sense to have one, and even more sense to use one. But, I didn't.

Dinner was cooking and a salad was needed. What Joe got that night was neither sirloin tips nor asparagus tips. Finger tips were the blue plate special. 

Well, really, just one finger tip. My left ring finger tip (is there any irony in that?). It turns out that fingers are highly vascularized. You'd have thought I hit a main artery.  Nausea comes quickly in these cases. I refused to look. Half my finger had been cut off... Joe was going to have to bandage it and locate the missing piece. I sat down on the toilet, turned away, and held out my hand. Joe removed the paper towels, cleaned the finger, and carefully bandaged it. The trauma was too much for me so I lay down while Joe went to retrieve the finger tip from the salad. 

The next day I called in sick explaining that I had cut off a chunk of my finger. When I returned to work at Whitman Middle School, students stopped me in the hall. "Hey Mrs. G! Let's see your finger!" I held up the bandaged hand and put on a brave face.

Several bandages later Joe convinced me to look. I was prepared to find a flattened fingertip. Yes, I sliced my finger. Yes, I thought, I can live without a fingertip. I was ready. But the chunk I had imagined, the chunk that Joe picked from the salad, the chunk he recklessly tossed in the garbage.... that piece was no bigger than a grain of rice.

Eat Pie with a Spoon

I shoveled pecan pie into my mouth. Enjoying every forkful that made it to my mouth and regretting every bit that fell into the sink. Made from scratch, it was good. Crunchy, gooey inside, tons of whole pecans on top, buttery crust, toasty, nutty, yummy. Irresistible really.

Why I was hurrying, I can't recall, but I suspect my goal was to eat as much pie as possible before Joe could show up and want some as well. I was really protective of my pecan pie (okay... maybe greedy is the word). Unfortunately, in my hurry I managed to stab myself with the fork. Where you ask? If I had stabbed my arm, hand, or even neck I would have been okay with that. But no. I speared the roof of my mouth with a fork. It is hard to understand how this happened and the mechanics of it all seem to be blocked from my memory.

No more pie that day. My mouth really hurt, but I knew from having bitten my cheeks (everyone does that, right?) that my mouth would soon recover.  My theory was that mouths heal quickly so that we don't suffer pain when trying to eat and then starve (its a survival of the well-fed theory). I was wrong.

Two days later the pain was worse. By angling my head just right, holding a mirror in one hand, and bending under a light I could see that what began as four little puncture wounds had become a huge, gross, white patch, surrounded with red. Ugh.

A visit to student health, a pathetic attempt to explain how I had injured the roof of my mouth in the first place, and then a bottle of mega-dose antibiotics. All would be good again. But not really. I don't think I have baked a pecan pie since then. And every once in a while, I swear, I still feel twinges of pain on my upper palate.